There Was a Tree

There was a tree in the side yard of the house I lived in when I was five. It was small but sturdy, the branches low and nearly parallel to the ground. It was the perfect sort of tree for a five-year old to climb. I was in the tree one day when I realized I wouldn’t always be able to climb this tree, that in fact today was the last day I would ever climb this tree because we were moving. Although by this time in my short life I had already lived in several houses, this moment in the tree was the first moment the concept of impermanence impressed itself on my young mind. How was it to be that I would never climb this tree again? It had lived in my life for an entire year, a whole one-fifth of my entire life. This became my first memory of sadness, the first ache of saying goodbye, up in that tree I would never climb again.

There was a tree at our new house, different in every way from the old tree. It was thick and tall and had no low-hanging branches so we could not climb it. But the chowkidar built a tree house in it for his daughter and my sister and me. He wedged a square slab of plywood in the middle where the large branches split off from the trunk. He took smaller planks and inserted them between the fork of two smaller branches to create shelves for us to store our treasures. The only way up to the tree house was with a ladder that lived in his courtyard. My sister and I would walk over to their little house and knock on the metal gate to the courtyard. One of Ribqa’s parents or siblings would answer, and we would ask if Ribqa could play. Then the three of us would carry the ladder through the jungle of overgrowth outside her house to our tree. We’d set it up against the trunk and climb up to our platform where we might concoct a stew of rocks and sticks and berries dropped from other trees in an old clay pot we’d retrieved from the garbage pit. We kept the stew on the shelf along with discarded medicine bottles and empty corn flakes boxes until it started to emit an overripe stench and we had to throw it out.

There was a tree at this same house that was also unclimbable but had one perfect branch for hanging a swing. The seat was red plastic and the rope a tough yellow nylon, frayed from the heat and the sun, that burned our hands as we clung to it. The branch it hung from was very high, providing ample space to twist the two ropes together, round and round and round, until they couldn’t twist anymore and then we would let go, and as the ropes unraveled, we’d spin, blond hair swirling, toes scrunched in our sandals to keep them from flying off, a blurry world of green hedges and leafy trees and brown dirt dancing all around us until the spinning came to a sudden stop and we’d stand up dizzy and delighted. We also liked to stack ourselves on the swing like a set of Russian dolls, my older brother sitting down first and then me sitting on his shoulders and then our little sister climbing up onto my shoulders so we were now a human pyramid on a swing all holding on tight as my brother pushed off and we went wobbling back and forth, swinging precariously until the moment of collapse.  My dad, rather than telling us to be careful or to stop altogether because it wasn’t safe, got out the video camera instead.

There wasn’t any tree big enough to climb or swing from at the next house we lived in, only some weak little saplings tucked in among the rose bushes. I didn’t know what to do without trees to climb so instead I climbed on the wall that separated our yard from the street outside. It was taller than a man and just wide enough to walk along without growing afraid of falling. I could climb up onto it in the corner where it met the wall to our neighbor’s house and use the crumbling bits in the bricks for toe holds. Then I would walk the length of the wall down to the big, black gate and jump over the sweet peas into the yard. It was my only thrill at this city house, where we lived cooped up with very few friends or visitors, homeschooling and hating each other most of the time. It was usually too hot to venture outside so when the weather cooled in the winter, the wall became my playground – until one day my mom caught sight of me from the open dining room window. She called out to me, demanding I get down right away. I jumped down, not sure of what I had done wrong, and she berated me for making myself visible to any men who might be walking on the street outside. I was 12 now and therefore too old to be a child, too old to be forgiven for playing, yet not quite old enough to understand why my body was now an object for filthy eyes. I fled to my room in a fit of tears, ripping my glasses off my face and burying my eyes deep into my bed, muffling my anger and my screams, and inadvertently smashing my glasses and bending the frames out of place.

There wasn’t a tree two houses later, but my parents planted one. I watched it grow from a baby sapling to a gangly teenager as I grew myself from teenager to young adult. I remember thinking as I watched it grow, “Someday grandkids will climb in that tree.” I was right. My niece and nephew were born and started growing up right alongside that tree until one day when my nephew was seven, I showed him how to climb it. I hoisted myself up first, but the branches were still too high for him, so I got back down and boosted him up. He had never climbed a tree before. I coached him through his fear, guided his feet and hands as he followed me through the branches, smiled down at his grandpa as he took our picture. I hoped the tree would be here forever, that we would be here forever, though life doesn’t usually work that way. So maybe I hope instead that when the tree is gone, and his grandparents are gone, and even I am gone, that my nephew will remember this tree and keep climbing new trees.

My niece wants to sing a song for me at the pool. She’s sitting on the side of a lounge chair in her Frozen-themed swim suit and floaties, and in her five-year old pitch begins to sing:

There was a tree, there was a tree,

The prettiest tree, the prettiest tree

You ever did see, you ever did see.

The tree in the hole, and the hole in the ground,

And the green grass grew all around, all around,

And the green grass grew all around.